Pomonacopia: Big Art in the Inland Empire

Andre Miripolsky has always thought big. His cutting edge paintings, sculptures, mobiles, graphics, film sets, and costumes all mean big color, big design, big ideas. The Paris-born, CalArts-educated artist describes himself as “Maestro of his Kingdom of Color.”

So it’s a natural progression that Miripolsky’s most recent art project is a kingdom unto itself:  the vibrant mural “Pomonacopia,” which stretches over four sides of the School of Arts and Enterprise in downtown Pomona, Calif. Designed to illuminate Pomona’s commitment to public art, the vast and joyous piece serves as the heart of the art scene for the community.

Miripolsky’s stunning mural is hardly his first large-scale piece. In 2013, whimsical sharks titled “Sharks in the City,” looked down from a CBS outdoor billboard, and in 2012, his cityscape mural, “Rising Realty Partners” graced Pershing Square. He’s even taken on elephants – “Punkaphant” was created for the Elephant Parade, an organization supporting the endangered Asian elephant with outside art on parade around the globe, including a recent stop in Dana Point.  He’s no stranger to crowd-pleasing, crowd-drawing images either.  From costumes for Elton John and album package and visual design for Bette Midler to serving on the boards of LA area art organizations including the L.A. Art Alliance, the Downtown Artwalk, and the Hollywood Arts Council, Miripolsky brings his love of color, shape, and form to everything he touches. If Midas turned things into kaleidoscopic stained glass instead of boring old gold, then he would get along just fine with Miripolsky.

It’s that stained glass, pop, rainbow-spinning abstract richness that the artist has now used on his biggest project yet.

“I consider this a world-class public art installation,” Miripolsky says, and it is – smack in the heart of Pomona, Calif., a city previously not synonymous with art. But that may have changed along with the transformation of a white stucco building into a vast 10,500-square-foot canvas of shapes and symbols that are so deeply combined and intricately designed that they take on a strange depth, pulling the eye into them as if the images were 3-D.

Miripolsky notes that his brilliantly colored images were inspired by the area’s agriculture. Oranges and grapes once reigned here rather than industry, and the name Pomona itself represents the Roman goddess of fruit.

The artist chose dots and circular shapes to represent fruit and the area’s fecund and fertile crops; arrows are also prevalent. Miripolsky calls them “iconic symbols for positive direction.”

They point in many directions here, including to the school building’s main entrance. The idea: directing students toward art education, according to Miripolsky.

 

The eye is also directed up, down, and around the building, led by brightly colored stripes that represent the highways leading into Pomona. Visually traverse these roads and find titular cornucopias, the symbols of abundance. To Miripolsky, such abundance is at the core of his mural, which serves up the fruit of his artistic labors rather than literal fruit.

Pomonacopia exudes the joy and vividness of its creator, and marks a major success for the city’s Public Art Fee Fund which is assisting with the mural’s cost.

 

 

Miripolsky’s mural is not just about the abundance of sunshine and agriculture in the region. It’s also designed to express the essence of the school and the community Arts Colony.

 

This riveting piece of art was created entirely by Miripolsky and his mural team:  Bisco Smith of Venice, Paul Juno of North Hollywood and Christian Ornelas of Pomona.

Together, their project has become a living, breathing history, with sight-seers and community members alike enjoying watching the process of art being shaped in a real-time environment. Passer-bys stop for photo ops, and community members are embracing the art itself and the process of creation in their midst.

The School of Arts and Enterprise (The SAE) and the Friends of the SAE have committed themselves to establishing the largest public art project unveiled in the Pomona Arts Colony in years with Pomonacopia.

Working and living at the Brewery Arts Colony just east of DTLA, Miripolsky is no strange to the idea of taking an urban area once artistically dormant and helping it blossom into a focal point for culture and innovation.

Located at 375 South Main Street, the work celebrates the community’s history, and makes a worthy road trip from Los Angeles or Palm Springs. This vast mural is frankly the beginning of something even bigger: SAE’s commitment to shaping downtown Pomona into a culture center. Thanks to Miripolsky, the community is on its way.